


Ghost Story

by cdybedahl



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-04
Updated: 2011-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-16 02:27:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cdybedahl/pseuds/cdybedahl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Warren shoots her, Tara haunts the Summers residence. Her main source of entertainment is cleaning up, and stalking the dreams of the living.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Story

For Tara, death became much less boring after she found that she could enter people's dreams.  
Before that, all that she could do was to hang around the Summers house. She couldn't touch anyone, which was terribly frustrating. Her body just passed through theirs when she tried to hug them. She could touch things, though, so she might have played the poltergeist and thrown stuff around. But she was far too polite for that. Mostly she cleaned stuff up, and put the things that Buffy and Dawn dropped back where they should be.  
Of course, nobody ever noticed that enough to suspect they had a ghost. Not even when she, in a rare fit of pique, had the stereo play nothing but k. d. lang for three days straight. Someone turned it off, she turned it back on. They tried to change the CD, she held the player shut. They tried to pull the plug, she put it back in. Eventually, Buffy got pissed off and put her fist through the stereo.  
There wasn't much Tara could do about that.  


When the summer ended, Willow came back to Sunnydale. She was in a bad state, and spent a lot of time in her bed staring at the ceiling. At those times, Tara would sit next to her on the bed, wishing more than anything that she could hold her bereaved girlfriend in her arms, even if just for a few moments. But she couldn't, and as Willow cried and whispered her name she could do nothing but sit there and watch how her own tears fade out of existence before they even hit the blankets.  
One time, she tried writing "Tara loves Willow" in the fog on the bathroom mirror while Willow was showering. She'd hoped it'd make Willow feel better, but all it did was to make the poor girl freak out so bad she refused to leave her bedroom for a week.  
Tara didn't do that again.  


As time passed, Willow got better. She returned to what passed for normal life in Sunnydale. There were vampires, yes. There was a new big bad flexing its muscles. Anya was a demon, and then she wasn't again. Life went on. Willow got back into school.  
She still didn't sleep very well, though. More nights than not, she'd wake up sweaty and panting in the middle of the night. It wasn't the good kind of sweaty and panting, either.  
"I so wish I could kiss you now, sweetie," Tara said. But of course she couldn't.  
She got up from the chair and walked over to the bed. She stood next to it, looking down at her sleeping love. Her face looked so troubled. Her forehead was so sweaty, and her brow so furrowed. Tara couldn't stand helplessly watching her, so she left the room.  
She walked through the upstairs corridor, as she had so many times before. She walked past the room where Dawn slept, and from where an otherworldly green light shone, visible to ghostly eyes. She walked past the room where Buffy slept, and from in there she heard a moan. Curious, Tara stopped. Was Buffy also having bad dreams? Or was that another sort of moan? She pushed the door open and entered the room.  
Buffy was lying naked in her bed. This was quite obvious, since her blanket had fallen to the side and all of the Slayer was quite visible. She was even sleeping on her back, as if to give Tara the best view possible.  
One thing that Tara had found out about being a ghost was that there really was no reason to resist temptation any more. If she'd still been alive and walked in on Buffy like this, she'd be out again as if she'd had an embarrassment-powered rocket strapped to her ass, and she'd have blushed like crazy every time she saw Buffy for days afterward. Which would've been awkward and unpleasant. But now? Nobody knew she was watching. Nobody would see if she blushed. There would be no difference if she walked out of here, except that she'd beat herself up about missing out on some excellent fantasy material. And thank the Goddess that she could at least still touch _herself_!  
Buffy's nipples were standing on attention on top of her small, pretty breasts. She was moving her hips in a very suggestive way, and the moans that had made Tara come in here in the first place certainly weren't of the unpleasant kind.  
It made for a _terribly_ enticing image, altogether.  
So much so that she actually felt a little like she was cheating on Willow. Intellectually, she knew that was silly. Even though they'd never actually done the until death do us part thing, she felt that that was sort of implied in any relationship. She should be allowed to do whatever she could, in her ghostly state.  
But unfortunately her emotions didn't quite agree. She sat down on the edge of Buffy's bed.  
"Thanks for the lovely image, anyway," she said. She made to pat Buffy's clenched fist. She liked to do that sort of thing sometimes, even though it never worked. It gave her a sense of being there, now that she was kind of used to seeing her hand passing through someone else's.  
Except this time there was a flash of white light and she suddenly found herself elsewhere.  


It was a corridor, that much was obvious. The walls were hard, probably concrete. They were bare and painted in the kind of pale green they like to use in hospitals. There were doors at regular intervals, made out of metal and closed. At both ends of the corridor were bigger, more serious-looking doors. They were painted orange.  
Tara frowned. What the...?  
From somewhere near, she heard a familiar-sounding moan. When she looked closer, she noticed that one of the doors wasn't quite closed. She walked closer. The sounds were definitely coming from inside that room. They weren't just moans either, there were grunts and occasional words, although she couldn't make out what was being said. There seemed to be more than one voice, though.  
She nudged the door open and looked inside.  
The room was obviously some kind of prison cell, although not the kind you saw in the movies where everybody could see in at any time. This was a proper room, if very small, with a tiny little armored-glass window, an iron-frame bed, a small desk and a chair. The bed was probably meant to be up against the far corner of the room, but at the moment it had been pulled out a foot or so. Buffy was lying on it, on her back, stark naked. Her arms were handcuffed to the bedposts. Her legs were spread so her knees were at the edges of the bed, her lower legs bent down under it and her ankles cuffed together in the middle. It looked very uncomfortable.  
On the bed, between Buffy's spread-apart thighs, another girl knelt. She was naked too, apart from a thick black leather belt with many keys, a radio and many hooks and fasteners on it. She had shoulder-length dark hair and much bigger breasts than Buffy. Tara thought she looked familiar, but couldn't quite place her. Her left hand was solidly placed on one of Buffy's breasts, kneading it harshly. Her other hand was busy fucking Buffy with a long black nightstick. The words Tara had heard earlier turned out to be Buffy going "Yes!", or "Harder!", or "Don't stop!".  
Well. This was, to put it mildly, interesting. Tara stayed at the door, watching. Rough as the scene was, it was obvious that both women were enjoying it, and watching it was turning her on. So she kept watching.  
After some time, the dark-haired girl increased the tempo with which she pounded her nightstick into Buffy, and pretty soon after that Buffy obviously came. She twitched so the entire bed moved, and she screamed loud enough to be heard many rooms away.  
"Liked that, did you?" the dark-haired one said. She let go of the nightstick but left it where it was, buried to half its length in Buffy's vagina.  
"My turn now," she said. She moved around on the bed so she straddled Buffy's head, facing towards her legs. When she turned around, Tara saw her face.  
Faith. It was Faith. Fucking Buffy in a prison bondage fantasy. Or possibly rape fantasy. It was a bit hard to tell.  
This just _had_ to be Buffy's dream. Or nightmare.  
"Oh, that's good, B," Faith sighed. She had closed her eyes, and faint slobbering sounds came from where Faith's crotch met Buffy's face.  
"This so is why God gave you a tongue."  
Tara looked on, transfixed. After Faith changed position, she had a much better view. She could see Buffy's whole body (well, except her face) and all of Faith (and what marvelous breasts she had!). She could see Buffy's pussy, with the long black rod sticking out of it. She could see the muscles in Buffy's neck move as she ate Faith out.  
She really shouldn't be watching this. It was private. It was in Buffy's _head_ , for crying out loud.  
But on the other hand she was very curious. And she was dead, so what were they going to do anyway?  
She opened the door fully and walked into the room.  
"Hey, what do you know," Faith said. "Red's little girlfriend. Wanna join in?"  
"I don't know if I can," Tara said. "I've been having problems touching things, lately."  
Buffy stopped licking. Odd sounds came from her.  
Faith cocked her head. "I think she wants to say something," she said. "Do you think we should let her?"  
Up close, Buffy looked even more vulnerable and enticing. There was something appealingly vulgar about the way the nightstick extended from her, the way the darkly golden strands of pubic hair stuck to it.  
"Go ahead," Faith said. "You won't know unless you try. And don't try to tell me that you never wanted to cop a feel of the great and powerful Buffy, 'cause I won't believe you."  
Well, there was some truth to that. She had sometimes let her eyes rest a few seconds longer than necessary on Buffy's posterior, even while she was with Willow. And this was in a dream, while she was dead. How much more of an excuse did she think she needed?  
Gingerly, she put a fingertip to the inside of Buffy's thigh. It was warm, and smooth, and wonderful. Buffy twitched.  
"I can feel it!" Tara said. She grabbed hold of the thigh with her whole hand. She could fell it! Flesh that wasn't her own!  
"Cool," Faith said. "Now give her a good fondling. Or pinch her. Bitch deserves a bit of pain."  
This was Buffy's dream? It did rather make her wonder about the Slayer's mental state. She let her hand slide up Buffy's body, from the thigh over the hip, between the breasts to her chin. After that it got a little too close to Faith's girly bits for her peace of mind.  
"I'm... not much for the bondage thing," Tara said. "Do you think you could move a little, just for a moment, so I can talk to her?"  
"Sure," Faith said. "If that's your kink, who am I to argue?"  
She moved back a bit, and sat down leaning against the head of the bed. She had the top of Buffy's head only an inch from her pussy, and Tara had a very clear view of her intimate parts.  
Buffy blinked and looked confused at Tara.  
"Tara?" she said. "What are _you_ doing here?"  
"I'm kind of visiting, I think," she said. "Er, when you wake up, could you do something for me?"  
"What do you mean when I wake up?" Buffy said. She wasn't getting any less confused, it looked like.  
"Never mind that," Tara said. "I'll wake you up so you remember this. I just want you to tell Willow that I still love her, and that I wish I could hold her when she cries."  
"You're not big with the making sense here," Buffy said.  
"You'll understand when you wake up," Tara said. "I hope," she added.  
She closed her eyes and wished as hard as she could that she'd be back in Buffy's bedroom.  


Another flash, her balance shifted so she had to catch hold of the nearest object to keep from falling, and when she opened her eyes she was back. Everything was exactly as when she left it. Including a very naked Buffy on the bed in front of her.  
A very naked Buffy who she needed to wake up before the dream faded. Quickly, she grabbed a vase from the bedside table and emptied it on Buffy's head, water, flowers and all. Then she carefully put the empty vase back on the table while Buffy flew out of her bed, coughing and spitting.  
"See?" Tara said. "That woke you up all right."  
Buffy was looking from the empty vase to the tulips in her bed.  
"Ooh-kay," she said to herself. "Definitely weird."  
She grabbed a bathrobe from where it had been tossed on a chair. She put it on and headed out of the room. Tara followed. They went into Willow's room. _Their_ room, Tara still thought of it as. Buffy sat down on Willow's bed and gently shook her friend awake.  
"Buffy?" Willow said after she'd managed to regain some amount of consciousness. "Is something wrong?"  
"I don't think so," Buffy said. She didn't sound very sure, Tara thought.  
"You don't _think_ so?" Willow said, so apparently Tara wasn't alone in her opinion.  
"I had this dream," Buffy said. "And Tara was in it. It was kind of strange."  
"Tara?" Willow said. "Was she all right? Strange how?"  
"Well, she didn't at all fit into the dream," Buffy said.  
"Oh?" Willow said. "What was the dream about?"  
Buffy suddenly blushed.  
"Nothing really," Buffy lied. "It had Faith in it."  
"Oh," Willow said. Again. "That's no good. Do you think it was a prophetic dream? You've had those before."  
Buffy's blush intensified.  
"Now that would be something," she said. "But no, I'm pretty sure it wasn't prophetic."  
"If you say so," Willow said. "But then why did you wake me up?"  
"It was just that in the dream, Tara asked me to give you a message. And I wanted to do that before I forgot."  
Willow just waited.  
"She said she still loves you," Buffy said. "And that she wishes she could hold you when you cry."  
Tears appeared in Willow's eyes.  
"I wish she could too," she said.  


In the days that followed, Tara tried out the dream thing several more times. Buffy nearly always had highly erotic dreams, it turned out. Some of them were very hot, like the one she'd walked in on the first time. Some of them made her wish that she could clean out her brain with bleach, like the one with Giles.  
Dawn's dreams she couldn't enter at all. Something about her not actually being a real human being, she guessed.  
Spike dreamt about Buffy, mostly. Occasionally he dreamt about Angel, and there was that thing with the bleach again.  
Xander slept over a couple of times, and it turned out that his dreams weren't nearly as sex-oriented as Buffy's. Also, he dreamt more than she would've guessed about Anya.  
And every night she sat by Willow's bed, wondering what she was dreaming but afraid to find out. What if it was about herself? What if she went in there and the first thing she saw was herself getting shot? She was pretty sure that scene figured in Willow's dreams fairly often.  
Or what if she went in there and found Willow dreaming about somebody else? She wasn't sure she could stand seeing Willow getting hot and sweaty with, for example, Amy. Or Anya. _Maybe_ if it was Buffy. There could be a dreamy threesome...  
But no. Oh, and what if it was Oz? Or somebody else with boy parts? What if it was _Giles_?! Willow had said that she used to have a crush on him, once.  
It was almost two weeks before her curiosity overpowered her nervousness. That night, Willow was smiling and making pleased little sounds. Sounds like the ones she used to do when Tara kissed her neck, and all of a sudden she just couldn't bear not knowing who made her sound like that, even if only in her dreams. She walked up to the side of the bed, knelt down and placed a kiss on Willow's forehead.  


After the customary white flash, Tara found herself standing in a kind of futuristic office. It had a desk with only a few things on it, and it went mostly in red and gray. There was a window, and outside the window stars passed by. She couldn't see Willow. She couldn't see anyone, actually, but the sound of running water came from behind a narrow door. Moments after she'd noticed the sound it stopped and the door opened.  
A stern-looking woman, closer to middle age than youth, with well-kept brown hair and dressed in a black and red uniform walked into the room. She raised an eyebrow when she saw Tara, but kept walking until she'd sat down in her office chair.  
"And who might you be?" she said.  
Tara waved a little at her.  
"Hi," she said. "I'm Tara."  
"Is that your name or your species?"  
"Oh," Tara said. "It's my name. Tara Maclay. I'm human. Or, at least, I was. Before."  
"And what are you doing on my ship?"  
"Your...?"  
Suddenly Tara recognized the place. It was from one of the TV shows Willow liked to watch. One of the Star Trek ones, although she didn't remember the full name. It hadn't really been to her taste, although the captain was very attractive.  
Even more so in real life than on TV, it turned out.  
"Oh," she repeated. "Sorry about that. I'm looking for my girlfriend."  
The captain looked very doubtful.  
"Your girlfriend?" she said.  
"Yes," Tara said. "About this tall, red hair, kind of thin, very pretty?"  
Suddenly all doubt was wiped from the captain's face. Annoyance appeared in its stead. _Severe_ annoyance.  
"Ah," she said. " _Q_."  
"Er, what?" Tara said.  
The captain stood up. She touched the badge she had fastened to her uniform. A chirping sound issued from it.  
"Janeway to Tuvok," she said.  
All right, that was her name. Janeway. Captain Karin Janeway, if Tara remembered correctly. And the ship was the Traveller, or something like that.  
"Tuvok here, Captain," a male voice said from the badge. "How can I help you?"  
"Is Q still in astrometrics?" Janeway said.  
"As far as I know, Captain, but Seven turned off the cameras a little while ago so I can no longer be certain."  
Janeway's face twitched a little.  
"Thank you, Tuvok," she said, her voice just as calm as before. "That will be all."  
She had a deep, sexy voice. Tara had thought so from the first time she'd watched this show with Willow. In fact, she found all of the captain very sexy. They'd argued playfully about that, back then. Who was the sexiest. The captain, the black woman with the wrinkly forehead or the curvy blonde with the painted-on clothes. Tara argued for the captain, Willow for the...  
Tara frowned. She'd just remembered something.  
"Astrometrics," she said. "Isn't there where... um, she works... tall, blonde, got a number for a name? Preposterous bust?"  
"Seven of Nine," Janeway said. "Yes, it is. And what do you mean by 'preposterous'?"  
Tara blushed. There had been talk of the captain's "special relationship" with the blonde, hadn't there?  
"I... I... I didn't..." she said. Or, mostly, failed to say. She looked down. Way to insult your host, bonehead. Maybe she should just wake up and leave Willow to her dream.  
Janeway chuckled. Tara looked up, surprised. The captain was smiling at her. So, probably not very angry.  
"I do see what you mean," she said. "Seven is indeed impressively well endowed in the curves department. I feel a bit intimidated by her too, sometimes."  
She came round the desk and took Tara's hand.  
"Is Q your partner?" she asked.  
Tara nodded. "Af... af... after a fashion," she said.  
"I see," Janeway said. "We seem to have something in common, then. Let's go down to astrometrics and have a look, shall we."  
Still holding Tara's hand, Janeway led her out of the room.  


The walked past the captain's crew without word or explanation, and then took the lift down a long way. Tara didn't know how long, but it took a while. Willow almost certainly knew. She had a book that was supposed to contain all sorts of technical detail about ships like these. Tara had always found that rather silly, but since it obviously amused Willow she never said anything.  
And right now she wouldn't have minded actually having read it.  
"Astrometrics," the lift said. It sounded slightly demented.  
"Here we are," Janeway said. "Please keep quiet and try not to make any noise while you walk."  
The door swooshed open. Outside was a corridor, in the same kind of retro-futuristic style as the rest of the ship. Janeway stalked ahead, and Tara followed. They didn't walk very far, only a few yards, before they came to a doorway in the wall. Janeway stopped just before it, carefully keeping out of view from inside. She gestured to Tara to be silent and listen.  
Tara listened.  
"...so if you recalibrate the sensors like this, and then route the signal through an infinitely variable vector grid, you'll be able to detect the mechatron particles from much further away," she heard Willow's voice say.  
"I see," another voice said. The blonde with the preposterous breasts, she assumed. "Your method is clearly superior to mine, again. You have convincingly demonstrated your superior intellect. Accordingly, I will accede to your request for sexual intercourse."  
Tara just barely managed to stifle an astonished snort. Janeway looked more pained than surprised.  
"Told you so, baby," Willow said. "Now lose the clothes."  
There was a peculiar whooshing sound.  
"I never get tired of seeing that," Willow said.  
Tara frowned and looked at Janeway, confused.  
Janeway just put her finger to her lips, urging her to keep silent.  
"Which kind of sexual activity would you like to engage in first?" Seven said. "I have researched several new varieties since your last visit."  
"Sounds interesting," Willow said. "But to start with I just want you to undress me. With your teeth."  
"That is a most inefficient method," Seven said.  
"Yes," Willow said. "But it's fun."  
"Very well. I will fulfill your request."  
Janeway nodded towards the lift and raised her eyebrows questioningly. Tara nodded. This was getting to be a bit much, and if they stayed she'd soon lose her self control and try to look. Which she wasn't at all sure was a good idea.  
Side by side, Tara and Janeway headed for the lift.  


"So do they always sound like that?" Tara said.  
She and Janeway had gone to the ship's mess hall, where they now sat in the least obvious corner. Janeway had got them both coffee. Black for her, with milk, whipped cream, sugar, chocolate syrup and cinnamon for Tara.  
"Oh no," Janeway said. "Usually there is more moaning and grunting involved. My Seven is a quite vocal lover, when she gets going."  
"Willow likes that," Tara said. Which was, she guessed, kind of obvious. This was, after all, Willow's dream. Even if it felt very real even in the places where Willow weren't.  
"Willow," Janeway said. "Is that the name you know her by?"  
"Yes," Tara said.  
"Pretty name. She's Q to us."  
"I gathered. That's kind of a weird name, isn't it?"  
"The Q are a weird bunch of beings."  
Tara decided not to ask any more about that. It had that abyss-like feeling of a subject that, once embarked upon, would never end. She sipped at her sort-of-coffee.  
"So, um, are you and, er, Seven, like...?"  
"Partners?"  
"Uh-hu."  
Janeway sipped her coffee. She held it hard enough that her knuckles paled, and Tara worried a little that the cup might break.  
"Yes," she said, jaw firmly set. "We are."  
"So, um, you don't really... like what's going on down there?"  
Janeway glared at her.  
"Do _you_ like it?" she said.  
Tara stirred the cooling sludge in her coffee cup.  
"Do you have any ice cream?" she said.  


Janeway had ice cream. Or, rather, her ship could make it. Before she had it do that, though, she insisted that they move from the mess hall to her own quarters. Because of crew morale, she said. Tara thought that she'd caught the captain looking rather lower on Tara than her eyes a couple of times too many for her to believe that reason, but she didn't argue. She'd been doing her best to ogle Janeway too.  
"You didn't answer my question," Janeway said as she handed Tara a huge bowl of chocolate-chip ice cream.  
Tara sighed. She'd hoped she'd got out of that one.  
"No, I don't like it," she said. She was sitting on the floor of Janeway's living room, leaning against the couch. Not for any particular reason, it had just looked the most comfortable.  
"So why don't you do anything about it?" Janeway said. She'd placed herself on the floor too, opposite the room from Tara and leaning against a wall. "Just walk in there and confront her?"  
Tara dug her spoon into the ice cream and ingested a large bit of it.  
"Well, I'm dead and all," she said once she'd swallowed it. "Can't really barge in and demand she not dream."  
"You're dead," Janeway said. She sounded doubtful.  
Tara nodded. "I'm a ghost," she explained. "Have been for a few months now."  
"You feel pretty solid for a ghost."  
"Well, this is all Willow's dream. I'm sort of intangible out in the real world."  
"To me she's this near-omnipotent being," Janeway said, "and no matter how much I'd like to walk in there and kick her ass I _can't_. She'd just teleport me somewhere, or make me stand there paralyzed or whatever awful thing she might dream up."  
Tara wanted to say that Willow would never do that, but unfortunately she knew her old girlfriend too well to do that. She knew quite well that Willow had a cruel streak that tended to show up when she thought she could get away with it. And, of course, this wasn't even the conscious Willow. This was dream-Willow, who probably was a whole lot less inhibited than the waking one. And who apparently had, in this place, awesome superpowers.  
Janeway sighed. She'd relaxed a bit once they got out of the public places, and now she looked a bit tired and down.  
"I just wish I could do _something_ ," she said.  
Tara got an idea. Well, not exactly _got_ it, but rather she thought of an excuse for an idea she'd had since pretty soon after she entered Willow's dream. She stretched out her leg and let her foot slide along Janeway's calf.  
"I... I guess it'd be one of the things that you'd only know about yourself but never could tell her, but you c... could make out with _her_ girlfriend, if you wanted."  
"Are you sure?" Janeway said, in her slightly hoarse voice that seemed to speak directly to Tara's groin.  
Tara nodded. "Really sure," she said.  
Before Tara quite knew what had happened, Janeway was across the room and sitting straddling her thighs. She had her hands tangled in the hair on the back of Tara's head, and she was kissing her as if it was going to be outlawed. Tara paid back in kind, as well as she could from her position. Her hands were roving over Janeway's back, and her tongue was quite busy playing with the older woman's. She tasted, unsurprisingly, of chocolate chip ice cream.  
Janeway broke the kiss and sat up straight.  
"Right here on the floor or in the bed?" she said.  
Tara smiled wickedly at her.  
"That's not an 'or' question," she said.  


A long time later, they were lying exhausted in Kathryn's bed. Tara knew by then that that was the captain's first name. Kathryn felt that you really should know the full name of anybody who'd had her tongue up your private parts, and Tara could see the sense in that. Their clothes were still in the living room.  
"I wonder what happens if I'm still here when Willow wakes up," Tara said. "If I just get thrown out into my world when this one vanishes, or if I get stuck here, or something else entirely."  
Her head was resting on Kathryn's toned stomach. The starship captain was in disgustingly good shape for a woman her age. It had made Tara feel a bit inadequate at first, since she was far from in good shape. Or, well, she hadn't been when she died and now she was sort of stuck.  
"Do you want to hang around and see, or would you rather leave soon?" Kathryn said.  
Kathryn's hand was resting on one of her breasts. It felt very nice, just having it there, warm and heavy.  
"Actually, I think I'd rather go," she said. "If you don't mind."  
"On one condition," Kathryn said.  
"What?"  
"Promise to try to come back."  
Tara tilted her head as far back as it'd go and smiled at the captain.  
"I promise," she said.  
"Good," Kathryn said. "I think you should be going, then. Seven's shift is over soon, and Q usually leaves then."  
"All right."  
She got out of the bed and went to get her clothes. A couple of buttons had got torn off when Kathryn removed her blouse, and it wouldn't stay quite shut. Her skirt was all wrinkled, and she had a serious case of bed hair. All in all, she really looked like what they'd been doing.  
Which really didn't matter, since she was usually invisible anyway. But still.  
"It's been good having you here," Kathryn said. She'd got out of bed and wrapped a robe around herself while Tara dressed, and now stood leaning against the frame of the door to the bedroom.  
"It's been good being here," Tara said. She gave the captain a quick kiss.  
She concentrated, and with a flash she was back in the real world. Or, possibly, just her usual one.  


Tara sat on Willow's bed. Her clothes and hair had returned to their usual state when she came back, which was interesting to know.  
Willow was running to and fro across the room. She'd overslept and was now trying to do everything at once in an attempt to still get to class on time. It didn't work, of course. It never worked, but Willow always did it anyway.  
When she was eventually done, Willow stopped for a moment in front of her mirror. She touched the photograph of herself and Tara, side by side and smiling in the grass.  
"I miss you, sweetie," she said. "I wish I could see you again."  
Tara got up from the bed and stood behind her.  
"You can, love," she said. "You can."  
Willow grabbed her backpack and walked out.  
"Just dream a dream where you're you," Tara said to the empty room.  



End file.
